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Friday, 7 February 2014

Team Write This Run: Jay

In just over three weeks Team Write This Run will be taking on 13.1 miles and, of course, we've all been training well to respect the distance. Jay, fellow team member and double 02:13:18 half-marathon-er, reveals the history of the distance and just why we should be taking it seriously.

respective PBs on
March 2nd. I’ve been reliably informed that this years medal is the
size of a dinner plate and has a built-in wifi hub and karaoke machine. They
may have been exaggerating a bit, but it does look big.

Anyway, fellow Write This Runner Jen has asked us all to
contribute half-marathon-themed guest posts for her (excellent) blog. As usual, I’ve been a bit slow off the
mark, and now all the topics that could be considered useful, informative or
vaguely based in reality have already been done. So that leaves me with…

The Secret
History of the Half Marathon

Most of us are familiar with the history of the marathon.
For those of you who aren’t, it goes something like this: Legend has it that
there was a chap tons of years ago who had to deliver a message about winning a
war or something. They didn’t have Skype, so he had to run all the way to deliver
the message. He had to run – he couldn’t just walk because either it was a very
urgent message or he was a bloody show-off. I’m not sure which. I’m also not
sure why he didn’t use a horse. Everyone had
a horse in the olden days. Anyway, he ran 24-and-a-bit miles, delivered the
message and then promptly dropped down dead. Everyone thought they’d honour him
by calling it “The Marathon” and encouraging other people to run the same
distance, which is a bit like organising a funeral for someone who’s been killed
by an arrow and then having a blindfolded archery contest at the wake. Then at
the 1908 Olympics, the King of England added another mile-and-a-bit to the
route, just to take the runners around the outside of his rose bushes rather
than having them trample straight through them, and that gave us the 26.2 mile
marathon we all know today.

Now, you probably think that the half marathon simply came
about by halving the distance of the marathon. Well you’re wrong.

In the summer of 1973, Alf Marathon, a rabbit farmer from
Frinton-on-Sea, set out to pick up a set of golf clubs he’d bought on eBay.
It’s worth pointing out that the eBay of 1973 was pretty much as it is today,
but with less internets and more hastily-drawn pictures of stuff you didn’t
want any more, sent by carrier pigeon to your cousin Nigel in the next village
along. In his youth, Alf had been extremely fit and had even represented his
school in the 200m three-legged hurdles (the 1950 inter-county finals of which
had seen over 100 fatalities). These days though, Alf was a little out of
shape; modern nutritionists might suggest that this was at least partly due to
his insistence on washing every days breakfast down with four pints of neat
pancake batter. Alf had barely started his journey that day, when he saw
something that made his blood run cold. A group of local schoolchildren on a
daytrip to the local petting zoo had inexplicably found themselves face-to-face
with a full-grown grizzly bear.

Full-grown and angry.

Without a moments thought for his own safety, Alf leapt into
action, luring the ursine attacker away from its trembling prey by pelting it
with rocks while shouting “CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, YOU BIG FURRY W%@&ER”. His
plan worked perfectly, and the bear lurched towards him, giving the children a
chance to scramble towards the safety of the visitor centre.

And now Alf was running; running for his life. The bear chased Alf precisely 41 times around the
petting zoo, each lap being 0.32 gruelling miles. Fortunately for Alf, his
Fiat-Punto-sized nemesis collapsed with exhaustion and died promptly at the end
of the 41st lap. Unfortunately
for Alf, the exact place the bear chose to collapse with exhaustion and die was
directly on top of a briefly triumphant Alf Marathon.

13.1 tragic miles.

Every year from then, on that very day, local athletes would
gather together to recreate that fateful chase. Sometimes a local celebrity
would dress up as the bear. Paul Daniels was particularly good. Over the years
it blossomed into a hugely popular running event, with similar races popping up
all over the world. It became known as the “Alf Marathon Versus The Bear
memorial marathon”, but over time was shortened simply to “The Alf Marathon”,
and is now more commonly known as “the Half Marathon”.

So there it is. The totally true and accurate history of the
Half Marathon. Don’t bother checking.

Want more? Really? You’re a bit odd. Well, if you insist,
you can have a look back through some old blog posts here.
Most of them contain ducks. Alternatively, you can chase me round the
playground that is twitter or pop over to Facebook and check out my page.